Reliable selection of security countermeasures

ABSTRACT

Among other things, this document describes a computer-implemented security method such as for authenticated selection of security countermeasures and for reliable identification of computing devices. The method can include receiving, by a computing system, a request from a computing device for an electronic resource. The computing system can identify a security token received from the device that made the request. Based on the security token, particular security countermeasures can be selected that are to be applied to the electronic resource to be served in response to the request. The countermeasures can be operable to interfere with an ability of malware to interact with the served electronic resource when the served electronic resource is on the computing device. Portions of the electronic resource that are to be executed on the computing device can be re-coded using the selected particular security countermeasures.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation application of and claims priority toU.S. application Ser. No. 14/321,172, filed on Jul. 1, 2014, which isnow issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,075,990.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This document generally relates to computer and web security.

BACKGROUND

With the ever increasing demand for online content, web server systemsare being adapted to handle requests for content from a growing numberof client devices. The greater demand for content not only imposes aburden on the computing resources required to efficiently respond to therequests, but also exposes web servers and client devices thatcommunicate with the web servers, to a variety of security risks. Insome cases, for example, malware may surreptitiously infect clientdevices and be programmed to exploit web pages or other served contenton the client devices. Once a web page has been compromised, malware mayuse the web page as a portal for further illicit actions involving a webserver, such as to complete unauthorized transactions on a banking ore-commerce website.

Web servers commonly encounter communications from both benign andmalicious client devices. At least a first portion of traffic for webserver systems may originate from client devices that are eithercompromised by malware or that are at a significant risk of beingcompromised. On the other hand, some traffic originates from trustedclient devices that have a very low risk of security threats. Forexample, website administrators may frequently access their site to testvarious site features using trusted equipment over a private networkwhere the risk of a security vulnerability being exploited is minimal.As another example, websites are commonly crawled by web bots forindexing purposes on behalf of trusted, well-known search engines. Webserver requests generally include one or more pieces of network orheader information such as an IP address associated with the clientdevice that is making the request, an indication of the protocol for therequest, source and destination port numbers, and application layerheader values.

SUMMARY

This document generally describes techniques for selectingcountermeasures to apply to resources (content) served to computingdevices, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. The countermeasures maybe configured to disrupt or detect exploitation of served resources bymalicious software on the computing devices. In general, thecountermeasures to be deployed can be based on a level of trust that asecurity system has with a requestor of the resources. That level oftrust may be established by identifying who the requester is, and/orwhat group the requester belongs in, and selecting appropriatecountermeasures, such as by applying fewer countermeasures for arelatively trusted requester.

For example, a security system is described that can coordinate with aweb server system to apply security countermeasures to resources servedfrom the web server system before they are delivered to client devicesthat requested the resources. As one example, a web page hosted by theweb server system may be requested by a client device. Before the webpage is transmitted to the client in response to the request, thesecurity system can apply one or more security countermeasures to theweb page. Some of the countermeasures may include re-coding the web pageso as to make it more difficult for bots such as man-in-the-browsersoftware or other malware to interact with the web page. To furtherdisrupt malicious exploitation of a served resource, the countermeasuresmay be polymorphic such that they are applied differently to contentserved to each of a plurality of client devices and also applieddifferently each time that the content is served to particular devices.Polymorphic countermeasures may reduce the predictability of code for aresource each time the resource is served, which increases thedifficulty for malware to learn about various features of the resourcebased on prior analyses of the resource code. A particular set ofcountermeasures may apply by default in the absence of an indicationthat the default countermeasures should not apply.

As noted above, sometimes the default countermeasures may not beappropriate or needed when responding to requests from some clientdevices. For example, a web operator may wish to allow certain bots thatare known to serve a legitimate or benign purpose to access resourcesfrom the web server without some or all of the default countermeasuresbeing applied to resources served to those bots. Such an approach may bebeneficial for the visitors, as they can operate automatically in theirbenign manner without having to worry about countermeasures blockingtheir work. Also, the security system can avoid the processing overheadrequired to add unnecessary, and potentially destructive,countermeasures.

Crawler bots from trusted search engines, load testing bots, andautomated web functionality testers are examples of bots that are benignbut that may frequently make requests for content from a web serversystem and that may lead the security system to mistakenly classify asmalware. Other clients that have sufficient safeguards in place tominimize malware risks or clients that are personally trusted byoperators of the web server system or security system, for example, mayalso be included in a whitelist that indicates that the security systemshould apply none or less than all of the default countermeasures toresources requested by the whitelisted devices. By permitting trustedclients to bypass particular countermeasures, conflicts can be preventedfrom occurring as a result of countermeasures that interfere with theability of some clients to perform legitimate tasks such as webcrawling, the load on the security system can be reduced, and anyresponse latency resulting from the application of countermeasures toserved content can be eliminated or reduced.

More generally, techniques are described herein for selecting particularsecurity countermeasures to apply to served resources based on anidentifier associated with computing devices that requested theresources. Computing devices that make requests for resources can submita security token with the requests in order to authenticate theiridentity with a security system. If the security system determines thata security token is valid, then certain countermeasures can be selectedparticularly for the computing device that made the request. If thecomputing device is a whitelisted client, for example, then no securitycountermeasures may be selected to apply when serving a resource. Insome cases, different sets of countermeasures, different levels ofcountermeasures, or additional countermeasures may be applied dependingon the authenticated identity of the computing device that requested aresource. In some implementations, authentication with the securitysystem is reliably performed by using a security token that has beengenerated at least in part using keys (e.g., shared secret recipes) thatare shared between only the security system and trusted clients.

A computer-implemented method is provided in some implementations. Themethod can include receiving, by a computing system, a request from acomputing device for an electronic resource. The computing system canidentify a security token received from the computing device that madethe request. Based on the security token, particular securitycountermeasures can be selected that are to be applied to the electronicresource to be served in response to the request. The countermeasurescan be operable to interfere with an ability of malware to interact withthe served electronic resource when the served electronic resource is onthe computing device. Portions of the electronic resource that are to beexecuted on the computing device can be re-coded using the selectedparticular security countermeasures, and a re-coded electronic resourcecan be served to the computing device in satisfaction of the requestthat includes the re-coded portions and other portions.

These and other implementations can include one or more of the followingfeatures. Selecting the particular security countermeasures can includeselecting no security countermeasures to be applied to the electronicresource to be served in response to the request.

The selected particular countermeasures can be configured to obfuscatethe portions of code for the electronic resource in a manner that doesnot substantially affect a presentation of the electronic resource whenthe re-coded electronic resource is executed on the computing device.

The selected particular countermeasures can be configured to insert,into the code for the electronic resource, instrumentation code that isprogrammed to execute on the computing device and to monitor interactionby other resources on the computing device with the re-coded electronicresource.

Selecting particular security countermeasures that are to be applied tothe electronic resource can include selecting, based on a securitypolicy for the computing device, a combination of two or more differentcountermeasures to add to the electronic resource from among a pluralityof different available countermeasures.

Different security policies for different computing devices can specifydifferent combinations of countermeasures to add to electronic resourcesthat are to be served in response to respective requests from thedifferent computing devices.

The method can further include determining whether the security token isvalid, and in response to a determination that the security token isinvalid, selecting one or more default countermeasures to be applied tothe electronic resource to be served in response to the request.Re-coding portions of the electronic resource can include using the oneor more default countermeasures to re-code the electronic resource.

The computing system can be configured, in response to receiving asecond request for an electronic resource that does not include asecurity token, to select one or more default countermeasures to beapplied to the electronic resource to be served in response to thesecond request, and to use the one or more default countermeasures tore-code the electronic resource requested in the second request.

The method can further include determining, based on the security token,that the computing device is whitelisted, such that the requestedelectronic resource is permitted to bypass one or more countermeasuresthat would otherwise be applied to the electronic resource if thecomputing device was not whitelisted.

Determining that the computing device is whitelisted can includedetermining that the requested electronic resource is permitted tobypass all countermeasures that would otherwise be applied to theelectronic resource if the computing device was not whitelisted, suchthat re-coding portions of the electronic resource comprises using nocountermeasures to re-code the electronic resource.

The security token can be generated by the computing device based on ashared secret recipe known by the computing device and the computingsystem.

The security token can be further generated by the computing deviceusing information, specified in the shared secret recipe, from one ormore internet protocol (IP), transmission control protocol (TCP), andhypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header values that are associatedwith the request from the computing device and that are identifiable bythe computing system from the request.

The method can further include decoding, by the computing system, thesecurity token using the shared secret recipe and the one or more IP,TCP, and HTTP header values that are identified from the request fromthe computing device.

The security token can be provided as a value of a particular HTTPheader included in the request from the computing device.

The method can further include determining whether the security token isvalid by checking a timestamp included in the security token against atleast one of a pre-defined start time and a pre-defined expiration time.

The method can further include changing the shared secret recipe fromtime to time so that the security token is caused to be generated by thecomputing device based on updated shared secret recipes at particulartimes.

In some implementations, a computer system is provided for determining amanner in which to re-code an electronic resource. The system caninclude a request manager, a security token manager, a security policymanager, a re-coding engine, and a network interface. The requestmanager is operable to receive requests for electronic resources fromcomputing devices and to obtain the electronic resources responsive tothe requests. The security token manager is operable to identifysecurity tokens in the requests from the computing devices. The securitypolicy manager is operable to select, based on the security tokensidentified in the requests, particular security countermeasures that areto be applied to the electronic resources that are to be served inresponse to the requests. The particular security countermeasures may beoperable to interfere with an ability of malware to interact with theserved electronic resources when the served electronic resources are onthe computing devices. The re-coding engine is operable to re-code theelectronic resources requested by the computing devices using theparticular security countermeasures selected by the security policymanager. The network interface is operable to serve the re-codedelectronic resources to the computing devices.

These and other implementations can include one or more of the followingfeatures. The system can further include a token recipe manager togenerate shared secret recipes for the computing devices that are usableby the computing devices to generate the security tokens based on one ormore internet protocol (IP), transmission control protocol (TCP), andhypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header values associated with therequests from the computing devices.

The security policy manager is further programmed to use the sharedsecret recipes and the one or more IP, TCP, and HTTP header values todetermine whether the security tokens are valid.

Some implementations include one or more computer-readable deviceshaving instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or moreprocessors, cause performance of operations comprising: receiving arequest from a computing device for an electronic resource; identifyinga security token received from the computing device that made therequest; selecting, based on the security token, particular securitycountermeasures that are to be applied to the electronic resource to beserved in response to the request, the countermeasures operating tointerfere with an ability of malware to interact with the servedelectronic resource when the served electronic resource is on thecomputing device; re-coding portions of the electronic resource that areto be executed on the computing device using the selected particularsecurity countermeasures; and serving a re-coded electronic resourcehaving the re-coded portions and other portions to the computing devicein satisfaction of the request.

These and other implementations can include one or more of the followingfeatures. Selecting the particular security countermeasures can includeselecting no security countermeasures to be applied to the electronicresource to be served in response to the request.

The selected particular countermeasures can be configured to obfuscatethe portions of code for the electronic resource in a manner that doesnot substantially affect a presentation of the electronic resource whenthe re-coded electronic resource is executed on the computing device.

The operations can further include, in response to receiving a secondrequest for an electronic resource that does not include a securitytoken, selecting one or more default countermeasures to be applied tothe electronic resource to be served in response to the second request,and using the one or more default countermeasures to re-code theelectronic resource requested in the second request.

The security token can be generated by the computing device based on ashared secret recipe available to the computing device and the one ormore processors.

The security token can be further generated by the computing deviceusing information, specified in the shared secret recipe, from one ormore internet protocol (IP), transmission control protocol (TCP), andhypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header values that are associatedwith the request from the computing device.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a conceptual flow diagram of an example process for selectingparticular security countermeasures to apply to a common web pagerequested by two different client computing devices.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an example system that re-codeselectronic resources based on particular security countermeasuresselected for particular clients.

FIG. 3 depicts a flowchart of an example process for using a securitytoken to authenticate a client device and to determine a manner in whichto apply security countermeasures to an electronic resource.

FIG. 4 depicts a flowchart of an example process for processing asecurity token that has been received by a security system inconjunction with a request for an electronic resource from a computingdevice.

FIG. 5 shows an example process for generating a security token.

FIG. 6 shows an example system for applying security countermeasuresincluding serving polymorphic and instrumented code.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a generic computer system for implementingthe processes and systems described herein.

Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicatelike elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

This document generally describes techniques that permit computingdevices to authenticate with security systems so that particularsecurity countermeasures can be selected by the security systems toapply to resources served to the computing devices. In someimplementations, authenticated selection of countermeasures can allowcertain trusted devices to bypass all or some countermeasures that wouldotherwise be applied to resources served to the devices. For example,some trusted computing devices that are not particularly vulnerable tomalicious attacks may be included in a whitelist that indicates that nosecurity countermeasures need to be applied to resources served to thosedevices. Other computing devices, on the other hand, that are especiallyvulnerable to malicious attacks may authenticate with a security systemso that the security system can apply additional or greater levels ofcountermeasures to resources served to those devices. As such, differentcountermeasures can be selected for resources served to differentcomputing devices based on an identity of who has requested a resourceand whether the requestor is authenticated with the computing system.

Generally, security countermeasures are operable to interfere with theability of malware to interact with a served electronic resource on acomputing device or to monitor interactions with an electronic resourceon a computing device. Applying some countermeasures may includere-coding original code for an electronic resource. However, suchre-coding and the application of other countermeasures can becomputationally expensive, particularly for a security system thathandles large amounts of traffic between clients and web servers.Moreover, some countermeasures may undesirably interfere with legitimateclients such as crawler bots for search engines and web load testingtools. Introducing countermeasures into a resource can also increase thelatency associated with responding to a resource request. Therefore, theauthentication techniques described in this paper can advantageouslyallow certain trusted clients to obtain resources without all of thedefault countermeasures being applied, thereby reducing latency,computational expense, and preventing interference with legitimateoperations such as web crawling by trusted clients. For example, acomputing device may request a web page from a site hosted by one ormore web servers. The web servers for the site may include or beconnected to a security system that applies countermeasures to resourcesserved from the site. When the requested web page is retrieved, the webserver can first provide the page to the security system before it isserved to the client device. Using a security token provided with therequest from the computing device, the security system may authenticatethe computing device and identify whether there are any countermeasuresto apply to the web page, and if so, which ones to apply. By default,the security system may be configured, for example, to re-code the HTML,JavaScript, and CSS code for the web page using countermeasures X, Y,and Z. However, the security token and other information from therequest may indicate that the computing device that requested theelectronic resource is trusted, and therefore, none, or perhaps only oneor two of the default countermeasures should apply to the web page.

In some implementations, as described further below, reliableauthentication can be achieved by way of a security token that isconfigured in a particular manner. A shared secret recipe that is sharedonly among the security system and trusted computing devices canindicate how combinations of data from the content or headers of arequest can be pieced together to generate at least a portion of asecurity token. Other information, such as randomly selected public dataor a shared private string of characters may also be incorporated intothe security token. The security token can be encrypted and submittedwith a request in order to authenticate a computing device with asecurity system. If the security token is determined to be valid, forexample, by verifying that a valid recipe was used to generate at leasta portion of the security token, then the computing device may beauthenticated and particular countermeasures selected to apply to theresource in response to the request.

Turning now to FIG. 1, a conceptual flow diagram is shown of an examplesystem and process 100 for selecting particular security countermeasuresto apply to a common web page that is requested by two different clientcomputing devices. The flow diagram generally depicts a first clientdevice 102 a that does not authenticate with a security system 104 and asecond client device 102 b that does authenticate with a security system104. Although each of the first and second client devices 102 a, 102 beach requests the bank.html web page from web servers 106, defaultcountermeasures are applied only to the web page served to the firstclient device 102 a, but are not applied to the web page served to thesecond client device 102 b, as a result of the second device 102 bproperly authenticating with the security system 104. In other examples,countermeasures may be applied to resources served to both devices,though the countermeasures for one device may be a mere subset of thosefor the other device, or the countermeasures may be different as betweenthe devices, without complete Venn-like overlap (one device may be thesubject of countermeasures that the other is not, and vice-versa).

Thus, although FIG. 1 shows an example of a whitelisted client device102 b being authenticated in order to bypass default securitycountermeasures, in some implementations, authentication can be used toselect any particular combination of none, one, or more countermeasuresthat are available to a security system 104 and that are notincompatible with each other. Additionally, similar techniques may applyto resources other than just web pages, such as electronic documents(e.g., PDF, MS WORD documents) and certain other data streams.

At stage A (112), the second client device 102 b obtains a shared secrettoken recipe. A token recipe is information usable by both a clientdevice such as the second client device 102 b and a security system suchas the security system 104 that indicates how to generate a validsecurity token for use in authenticating the second client device 102 bwith the security system 104, and that is not available for malware tofake. To maintain such privacy, the token recipe may have beencommunicated between the server system 104 and client device 102 b at adifferent time than the run-time communications, via encryptedcommunication, or in other appropriate manner.

The token recipe may be provided directly from the security system 104or may be provided indirectly from an entity associated with thesecurity system 104. For example, the second client device 102 b mayregister with the security system 104 and be provided with the tokenrecipe through a secure channel. In some cases, operators of thesecurity system 104 or the web servers 106 may send token recipes totrusted clients who have agreed to access content from the web servers106 under only certain conditions, for certain purposes (e.g., searchcrawling and indexing), or with certain safeguards guaranteed. Asdescribed further below with respect to FIGS. 4 and 5, a token recipemay specify combinations of one or more network or header valuesassociated with a request for an electronic resource to be used ingenerating a security token. The example token recipe shown in FIG. 1indicates that a security token may be formed using the last four digitsof the second device's 102 b IP address plus the first two characters ofthe HTTP User-Agent header value. The token may also be valid for only alimited time before a new token must be obtained for renewed privileges.For example, the token shown in FIG. 1 expires on Jan. 1, 2015, and maynot be accepted by the security system 104 after that time. Suchexpiration helps to ensure that malicious use of a compromised tokenwill at least be limited in time.

At stages B1 (114 a) and B2 (114 b), the client devices 102 a, 102 bmake respective requests for a webpage, bank.html, from the web servers106. The first client device 102 a includes no security token with therequest because it has not been trusted by the security system 104 andhas not been provided with a shared secret token recipe required togenerate a valid security token. The request 114 b from the secondclient device 102, however, does include a security token. The securitytoken may be sent as part of the request, for example, in a header of anHTTP request for the webpage. The security token indicates to thesecurity system and/or the web servers 106 that the request 114 b fromthe second client device 102 b should be trusted and that particularcountermeasures, if any, should be selected for responding to therequest 114 b that may be different than a set of defaultcountermeasures. In some implementations, even if the requests 114 a,114 b are addressed to a site hosted by the web servers 106, therequests 114 a, 114 b may be directed to and received by the securitysystem 104 for initial processing before being forwarded to the webservers 106. For example, the security system 104 may determine whetheror not to respond to particular requests, and may also be adapted torespond to requests for recently served or frequently served contentthat has been cached on the security system 104 without needing toretrieve the same content from web servers 106.

If the bank.html page 110 is not already cached on security system 104,or an updated version of the page is needed, then at stage C (116), thesecurity system 104 can request the web page 110 a from the web servers106, and the web servers 106 can provide web code and related componentsof the page 110 a (e.g., HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images, video, webapplications, etc.) to the security system 104. The security system 104may identify that the first client device 102 a has not provided asecurity token or other indication that it may be a trusted device.Therefore, the security system 104 may apply one or more defaultcountermeasures to the page 110 b that is served to the first clientdevice 102 a. By way of example, the security system 104 may modifyelements of the bank.html web code so as to interfere with the abilityof malware that may have compromised the first client device 102 a tointeract with the web page.

One re-coding transformation is shown in FIG. 1, as the originalbank.html page 110 a served from the web servers 106 has an <input>field whose ‘id’ is ‘account.’ After re-coding the page 110 a using oneor more security countermeasures, the re-coded page 110 b that istransmitted to the first client device 102 a with an obfuscated ‘id’value, ‘%yuTjP8&’. If malware is programmed to look for an input fieldwith the ‘id’ value ‘account,’ it will not be found in the re-coded page110 b. Additional and more sophisticated countermeasures are describedbelow with respect to FIGS. 3 and 6, for example. At stage F1 (122 a),the re-coded bank*.html page 110 b is transmitted to the first clientdevice 102 a.

At stage D (118), the process 100 authenticates the second client device102 b. Moreover, the second client device 102 b is determined to be on awhitelist of devices that are permitted to have content from the webservers 106 served without being re-coded for any securitycountermeasures. The security system 104 can authenticate the secondclient device based on the security token that was received with therequest. For example, the security system 104 may extract a clientcookie form the security token that was generated using the sharedsecret cookie recipe. The security system 104, which may also possessthe shared secret cookie recipe, may generate another copy of the clientcookie using the shared secret cookie recipe and the IP address and HTTPUser-Agent information identified from the request 114 b.

If the client cookie generated by the security system 104 matches theclient cookie generated by the second client device 102 b, then therequest 114 b from the second client device 102 b may be authenticated.Moreover, a security policy may be identified from security policyrepository 108 for the second client device 102 b that indicates whetherand how any countermeasures should be applied to resources served inresponse to requests from the second client device 102 b. In thisexample, the security system 104 determines that there are nocountermeasures to be applied to the bank.html page before it istransmitted to client device 102 b. Therefore, the original web codewithout any re-coding due to countermeasures is transmitted to thesecond client device 102 b at stage F2 (122 b).

Thus, by these techniques, code is served to all clients having the samefunctional operation—i.e., its operation seems the same to allrecipients. (Note, however, that access to the code at all canseparately be limited by a requester providing adequate authentication.)However, the underlying code may be different as between servings, andmay be supplemented based on the type and level of countermeasuresdeemed appropriate for a particular requesting device (which may beassociated by the system with a particular user and a user account). Inshort, each of the devices gets equivalent resources, but the form thatthose resources take can depend on decisions made by the systemregarding the identity of the requesting device and the level of trustto be given such device.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an example system 200 for re-codingelectronic resources based on particular security countermeasuresselected for a computing device to which the resources are served. Thesystem 200 may include one or more client computing devices 202 a-c thatmake requests for electronic resources, a network 204 such as theInternet (and ancillary networks, such as LANs at client and serversites) over which communications are made to and from the client devices202 a-c, a security system 206, one or more web servers 208, and asecurity analysis server 210. Particular components of the system 200may be adapted in some implementations to perform the processesdescribed with respect to FIGS. 1, 3, 4, and 5, and may be adapted toperform like operations similar to those performed by the system 600 inFIG. 6. For example, the security system 206 may perform operations likethose performed by security servers 602 a-n, and security system 104.

The system 200 is operable to exchange communications between the clientdevices 202 a-c, the security system 206, web servers 208, and securityanalysis server 210. The system 200 can serve electronic resources tothe client devices 202 a-c that have been re-coded according to one ormore security countermeasures in order to interfere with the ability ofmalware on the client devices 202 a-c to exploit served resources. Theclient devices 202 a-c may authenticate with the security system 206, inwhich case, the security system 206 can identify none, one, or moreparticular countermeasures to apply to a request. The selectedcountermeasures for an authenticated request may be different than thoseapplied for a non-authenticated request, which may apply by default.Information from client devices 202 a-c, such as reports frominstruction code that monitors interaction with served resources may beprovided to and aggregated at the security analysis server 210. Theaggregated information can be analyzed by the security analysis server210 do determine particular signals that indicate whether an interactionwith a resource is likely malicious (e.g., by malware) or benign (e.g.,by legitimate user interaction), for example. The web servers 208 mayhost content for one or more websites. Resources requested from the webservers 208 may be first provided to the security system 206 for anyapplicable security countermeasures to be applied before delivering theresources to the client devices 202 a-c. Although three client devices202 a-c are depicted as examples in FIG. 2, more or fewer devices maycommunicate in the system 200. For example, hundreds of thousands oreven millions of client devices may visit a popular website hosted bythe web servers 108.

The security system 206 can include an I/O interface 212 (networkinterface), a re-coding engine 214, a security policy manger 216, atoken recipe manger 218, a request manager 220, and a token manager 222.The I/O interface 212 is operable to receive and transmit data from thesecurity system 206. For example, the security system 206 may bearranged as a reverse proxy server for the web servers 208 so thatrequests form the client devices 202 a-c for content from the webservers 208 are first processed by the security system 206. The requestmanager 220 can receive requests for electronic resources from theclient devices 202 a-c and communicate with the web servers 108, andother servers as needed, to obtain the electronic resources responsiveto the requests. The re-coding engine is configured to re-codeelectronic resources requested by computing devices using particularsecurity countermeasures selected by the security policy manager 216.The security token manager 222 can identify security tokens associatedwith or included in requests from the client devices 202 a-c. The tokenmanager 222 may determine whether a security token is included orotherwise associated with the request, and may evaluate the validity ofthe security token to determine whether the request for a resource isauthenticated.

The token recipe manager 218 is operable to generate shared secretrecipes for the client devices 202 a-c that are in turn usable by thedevices 202 a-c to generate at least a portion of the security token,such as a client cookie, based one or more pieces of information. Theinformation specified by the shared secret recipes, from which clientcookies are created, can include network and application headerinformation associated with a request, or other information known oraccessible to the security system 206. The token recipe manager 218 canprovide security tokens to client devices 202 a-c upon request from auser with appropriate privileges. In some cases, the token recipemanager 218 can transmit updated shared secret cookie recipes to theclient devices 202 a-c periodically or at other determined times. Thetoken recipe manager 218 may store cookie recipe information correlatedwith identifiers for particular clients or computing devices. As such, aClient ID in the security token from a particular request, for example,can be used to look-up the correct cookie recipe for the client thatmade the particular request.

The security policy manager 216 selects particular securitycountermeasures for the security system 206 to apply to served resourcesbased on security tokens that have been received with client requestsfor the served resources. In some implementations, the security policymanager 216 may select particular countermeasures to apply based on adetermination that a requesting device is authenticated and the securitytoken is valid. For example, if the same security policy were applicableto any computing device that presented a valid security token with arequest, then the countermeasures specified by the common securitypolicy may be selected based simply on the determination that thesecurity token is valid without accessing a security policy uniquelyassigned to the requesting device. In some implementations, securitypolicies may be uniquely assigned among different client devices 202a-c. In that case, the security policy corresponding to a particulardevice that requested an electronic resource may be identified andevaluated to determine whether and which countermeasures are to apply toelectronic resources served to the particular device.

With reference to FIG. 3, a flowchart is shown of an example process 300for using a security token to authenticate a client device and todetermine a manner in which to apply security countermeasures to anelectronic resource. In some implementations, the process 300 may becarried out by the systems discussed throughout this paper, such asthose described with respect to FIGS. 1, 2, and 6.

The process 300 begins at box 302 where a request is received from aclient device for an electronic resource. The request may be received bya security system that is programmed to intercept resources that havebeen requested by client devices before they are ultimately delivered tothe client devices, and to re-code all or portions of the code for theelectronic resources that is to be executed at the client devices.Unlike some cryptographic systems that encrypt data primarily for thepurpose of securely transmitting and storing data in a manner that doesnot change the underlying data executed by a device when the data isde-crypted, the security system is programmed to re-code the underlyingdata for an electronic resource that is to be executed at a clientdevice. For example, a client device may make a request from a webbrowser for a web page that is to be loaded and executed by the webbrowser.

The security system may be programmed in some implementations to encryptthe web page to protect against, for example, eavesdroppers on anunsecure communications channel. But more than just encrypting the webpage, the security system may also be adapted to re-code all or some ofthe HTML, JavaScript, CSS, or other web code that makes up the web pageand that will be executed by the browser, for example, on the clientcomputing device to generate a presentation of the web page. In someimplementations, the security system may be a software module on acomputer server system, may be a virtual server or machine, or may beone or more physical machines that are logically situated between theclient devices and one or more web servers that host content requestedby the client devices.

The requested electronic resource may be any of one or more types ofappropriate data. In some implementations, the electronic resource mayinclude a web page, a document, a file, streaming data, and the like. Aparticular electronic resource may be comprised of one or moresub-resources (components). For example, a web page may be defined by anHTML page that references other sub-resources that all coordinate togenerate a complete presentation of the web page. Style sheets, such asCSS, are sub-resources that apply defined styles to a web page.JavaScript code, for example, is a sub-resource that adds interactivecapabilities to a web page. The web page may also include media contentsuch as images, videos, and advertisements that are also sub-resourcesof the web page. Generally, the resource may be deemed to include all orsome of the sub-resources in some implementations. When a web page isre-coded, for example, the HTML page, CSS, and JavaScript code for theweb page may all be re-coded in a coordinate fashion so as to not breakthe functionality or appearance of the web page.

The process 300 may apply to various types of client devices. Clientdevices, as used throughout this paper, may generally encompasscomputing devices and systems that make requests for electronicresources, from server systems, which are subject to one or morere-coding measures. Client devices may include end user devices such ashome or work desktop computers, or mobile devices such as tablets andsmartphones. Client devices may also be bots that perform automatedtasks independent of user control. Some bots may be benign and may beoperated by trusted entities, such as certain search engine crawlers,spiders, and web load testing tools. In some implementations, these botsmay be whitelisted by a security sub-system, and be provided withinformation needed to generate a valid security token that can be usedwhen requesting electronic resources in order to bypass one or morere-coding measures that would otherwise apply to the request. In someimplementations, a particular client device may refer to any one or moreof particular hardware devices, particular accounts, particular requeststhat match some criteria such as having an IP address is a particularrange, or may be any request that includes a valid security token. Thus,security policies, for example, may be stored in association with one ormore global client IDs that may be used by a trusted entity with any oneor more computing devices to make a request. For example, an end usermay make requests with any of a plurality of devices using the sameglobal client ID assigned to the user, regardless of whether the requestis made from the user's desktop computer, tablet, or mobile device.

In some implementations, the security system may receive requests eitherdirectly or indirectly from client devices. For example, the securitysystem may operate as a reverse proxy server that receives requests fromclient devices before they are forwarded to a web server that hostsresources identified in the request. In some implementations, requestsmay be received by the web server before the security system, and servedresources and other responses to the requests are provided to thesecurity system before being transmitted to the client devices.

At box 304, the electronic resource specified in the request is obtainedby the security system. The electronic resource may have one or morecomponents hosted by one or more web servers on one or more domains. Allor some of the components may be obtained at box 304 of the process 300.For example, a web page that includes HTML code may also include images,style sheets, and advertisements hosted by other web servers from onethat hosts the HTML code. The security system may obtain particular onesof these other components in addition to the HTML code so that anyapplicable re-coding measures can be coordinated among each of thecomponents of the resource. For example, a re-coding measure thatmodifies the ‘id’ value of elements within HTML code may makecorresponding changes in a style sheet that also uses the same ‘id’value being modified.

At box 306, the process 300 determines whether a security token has beenreceived in conjunction with the request. Security tokens may beincluded in the requests themselves, or may be provided separately butin connection with a request. In some implementations, a security tokenmay be included in the request as an HTTP header value. The HTTP headermay be a particular header that is agreed to between the client deviceand the security system. The header name may be any unreserved stringagreed to between the client device and the security system. Forexample, the header name “Secure-User-Agent” will be referred to in thispaper as the HTTP header that holds the security token in a request.Other header names may also be used. Accordingly, an HTTP request can bechecked to determine whether the agreed header is included in therequest. If the request does not include the header, then otherlocations for the security token may be checked, or it may be determinedthat no security token has been received and the process 300 continuesto box 310.

If the process 300 determines that a security token has been received inconjunction with the request from the computing device, the process 300can determine, at box 308, whether the security token is valid. If thesecurity token is valid, then particular security countermeasures may beselected to be applied to the electronic resource requested by thecomputing device. The particular security countermeasures selected mayinclude no security countermeasures, in some implementations, so thatthe computing device may be permitted to bypass a set of defaultcountermeasures because the valid security token authenticates that thecomputing device is trusted. If the security token is not determined tobe valid such that the computing device cannot be authenticated by thesecurity system, then the process 300 may proceed to box 310, where oneor more default security countermeasures are selected to be applied tothe electronic resource. In some implementations, the defaultconfiguration may be to apply none or a smaller subset of availablecountermeasures, and if the security token is validated, then particularcountermeasures are selected to be applied to the electronic resourcethat would not have been applied if the security token was not includedor was not determined to be valid. An example process 400 for validatinga security token is described further below with respect to theflowchart shown in FIG. 4.

At box 312, the process 300 identifies uses the security token toidentify applicable security countermeasures to apply to the requestedelectronic resource. In some implementations, many differentcountermeasures may be available to the security system to apply to aparticular electronic resource. Depending on the particular securitytoken received with the request for the electronic resource and whetherthe security token is determined to be valid, different combinations ofthe available countermeasures may be selected to apply to the electronicresource before it is ultimately served to the computing device. Forexample, a valid security token may indicate that the request is made bya trusted computing device that has been whitelisted such that all orsome of the countermeasures can be bypassed. When particularcountermeasures are bypassed, the computational expense associated withre-coding the resource based on the particular countermeasures isreduced or eliminated. Additionally, the end-to-end latency to serve arequested electronic resource to a computing device may also be reducedby bypassing particular security countermeasures due to fewer re-codingoperations being performed on the electronic resource.

Generally, the security countermeasures are configured to interfere withthe ability of malware to interact with an electronic resource on acomputing device. In some implementations, security countermeasures mayalso, or alternatively, be configured to identify information aboutcomputing devices executing an electronic resource. Some securitycountermeasures may monitor interaction with an electronic resource, byusers, malware, other software, or a combination of these, and mayreport information about the computing device and about detectedinteraction with an electronic resource to a central security system.The central security system may then aggregate such information frommany devices and analyze the information to determine signals thatindicate whether various types of interaction with an electronicresource is more likely benign (e.g., authorized user interaction) ormalicious (e.g., malware).

In some implementations, applying a security countermeasure to anelectronic resource can involve re-coding the electronic resource toincorporate computer code that is usable to implement thecountermeasure. For example, HTML code for a web page can be modified byinserting HTML code, changing particular portions of the HTML code, orremoving portions of HTML code to generate a re-coded web page that isconfigured to interfere with or to detect the ability of malware tointeract with the web page when executed by a computing device. In someimplementations, particular components of an electronic resource can bere-coded in coordination with each other so as to not break thefunctionality of the resource. For example, HTML, CSS, and JavaScriptfor a web page may be re-coded together in a manner that maintains thefunctionality of the web page. In some implementations, re-coding anelectronic resource can be done without substantially affecting how thepresentation of the resource when executed by a computing device. Thus,a web page may be re-coded in a way that prevents or makes it moredifficult for malware to interact with the web page on a computingdevice, even though the re-coded web page is displayed in substantiallythe same way as the original web page before countermeasures wereapplied. Therefore, the security countermeasures can be applied in amanner that is transparent to a user who interacts with an electronicresource on a computing device because the original and re-codedresources have a substantially equivalent functionality and appearance.

One or more of the available security countermeasures can includere-coding structural, functional, and/or stylistic elements of anelectronic resource. For web pages, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and otherforms of web code may be modified, inserted, or removed, for example, tomake more difficult attempts by malicious software to interact with webcode for the web page. For example, man-in-the-browser (MITB) malwaremay compromise a browser on a computing device and may be capable ofmonitoring user interaction with a web page (even a secured web page),performing illicit transactions using the web page's connection to a webserver without the user's knowledge, or may even change the content of aweb page to trick a user into providing private information to amalicious entity. By re-coding portions of code of a web page, MITB botsor other malware may be prevented from properly interpreting the code ofa web page, or may be prevented from identifying which elements that themalware should interact with.

In some implementations, the security countermeasures can includere-coding an electronic resource every time it is served so thatdifferent re-coded versions are served each time that a commonelectronic resource is requested by different computing devices, or whenthe common electronic resource is requested by a particular computingdevice across multiple sessions. For example, an HTML form field of abanking web page whose ‘id’ value is ‘account-number’ in the originalweb page code may be re-coded with a new ‘id’ value that is randomlygenerated, such as “$gha7Uo5aA.” A new form field ‘id’ value may begenerated by the security system each time the same banking page isrequested and served to a computing device so that malware on thecomputing device cannot know which form field is the‘account-number’field before the page is served. If the form field isstyled by a style sheet, CSS code for the page may be changed so that aCSS selector that is programmed to style the form field refers to there-coded ‘id’ rather than the original ‘id.’ Likewise, interpretive codesuch as JavaScript that adds functionality to the web page may bechanged in a coordinated manner with other components of the web page.

One or more security countermeasures may include inserting elements intoan electronic resource. For example, a web page that has a set of inputfields in the original page may be re-coded to add additional inputfields. Some of the input fields may be hidden when the web page ispresented on a computing device so that it appears to a user as if onlyoriginal input fields are included in the web page. However, theinserted fields may be difficult for malware on the computing device todiscriminate from the original fields, thereby deterring the ability ofmalware to effectively interact with or monitor the web page. In someimplementations, input fields on a web page or other document may besplit into multiple fields. For example, a first original text inputfield may be split into five different input fields that are all visibleand all overlaid directly on one another in a presentation of there-coded web page. As a user types into what appears to the firstoriginal text input field, the entered characters may be automaticallycaused to alternate into respective ones of the split input fields sothat no one input field collects all of the information entered by theuser. Data collected from the split input fields can be submitted andre-assembled by the security system, for example, remote from thecomputing device. The re-assembled data can then be provided to theapplicable web server.

In some implementations, one or more of the security countermeasures caninclude modifying the textual content (e.g., a block of displayed text)of an electronic resource so that the textual content is obfuscated inthe resource code, but is nonetheless caused to display correctly whenthe resource is executed by a computing device. Such countermeasures canbe achieved in some implementations by randomly scrambling the font thatis used to display the textual content. The font can be scrambled byre-mapping character codes with glyphs (the graphical representations ofcharacters) in the font file used to display the textual content. Forexample, the hexadecimal character code for ‘A’ in a normal Unicode fontfile is 0x0041. In a scrambled font file, the character code 0x0041 maycause a different random character to be displayed, such as ‘J,’ ‘8,’ or‘$.’ The textual content of the electronic resource can then beobfuscated by rewriting the textual content based on how characters arescrambled in a particular font file. For example, a character in textualcontent for ‘J’ may be rewritten to the character code 0x0041. When thecharacter is displayed with a font that maps 0x0041 to ‘J’, rather than‘A’, the ‘J’ character displays correctly despite being obfuscated inthe resource code.

One or more of the security countermeasures available to the process 300can include serving instrumentation code in conjunction with theelectronic resource that monitors interaction with the resource on thecomputing device. In some implementations, the instrumentation code maybe inserted into resource's original code, or it may be providedseparately from the original code. Instrumentation code can monitorinteraction with the resource and collect information about theinteractions. For example, the instrumentation code, which can beexecutable on the computing device, may detect when a user inputs andsubmits information in a form on the web page, when a user clicks on ahyperlink from the web page, when an asynchronous communication is madefrom the web page, or when any event occurs within the document objectmodel (DOM) of the web page. The instrumentation code may loginteraction events with the resource and transmit information about theinteraction events to a security server for analysis, for example. Insome implementations, the instrumentation code may log interactionevents regardless of whether the events result from legitimate userinteraction with the resource, from legitimate third-party interaction(e.g., a browser plugin), or from malware. For example, if a botattempts to send an asynchronous communication to a web server in anauthenticated session without the user's knowledge, the instrumentationcode may log and report information about the attempt so that theattempt may be blocked, or may be analyzed for circumstantialinformation that indicates a likelihood that the attempt is legitimateor malicious. In some implementations, instrumentation code may alsoidentify and report information about a computing device or computingsession such as the type of device, the browser used to view a web page,indications of other software or plug-ins installed in the browser, etc.Such information may be aggregated with similar information reportedfrom other devices and analyzed to determine when computing devices maybe compromised by bots, for example.

The particular security countermeasures selected at box 312 may beselected along various different lines. In some implementations, theprocess 300 may select one or more countermeasures of particular types.For example, two types of countermeasures—instrumentation code insertionand content modification—may be selected, while other types ofcountermeasures such as implicit API (e.g., hyperlink and form fieldvalue) obfuscation may be excluded. In some implementations, differentlevels of countermeasures may be selected that correspond to varyingdegrees of obfuscation and re-coding. For example, a low level ofobfuscation may apply a relatively small amount of re-coding that may beless robust but more efficient than applying a high level ofobfuscation, which may be relatively more robust at interfering withmalware attempts to interact with the re-coded resource but that iscomputationally more expensive to re-code.

In some implementations, the selected countermeasures may be selectedbased on an identity of the computing device making the request. Theprocess 300 can identify the computing device and determine which, ifany, countermeasures are to be applied to the electronic resource servedin response to the request. The selection of countermeasures may bepre-defined in some examples based on the particular computing devicemaking a request. For example, a security system carrying out theprocess 300 may be configured to trust requests from a particular searchengine bot that crawls and indexes public information on the internet.Accordingly, once the search engine bot is authenticated (e.g., using asecurity token), the security system may identify a security policy forthe search engine bot that specifies that no countermeasures are to beapplied to resources requested from the search engine bot.

Security policies may generally correlate computing device identifiersor other client identifiers with information about how to respond torequests from such computing devices. For example, some requestors thatare known to be bad actors may be blacklisted so that no resource issent in response to requests from devices belonging to such requestors.Other requestors may be trusted and may have previously been providedwith information usable to generate a valid security token. Securitypolicies for trusted computing devices may specify different sets ofcountermeasures to apply to resources that are sent in response requestsfrom the trusted computing devices than what would apply by default ifthe computing devices were not trusted. For example, one or more defaultcountermeasures may not apply for a trusted device, or nocountermeasures at all may be applied to resources served to a trusteddevice.

In some implementations, the security policy may specify which portionsof a resource that countermeasures are to be applied to, or may specifylevels of countermeasures that should be applied to a resource. Forexample, a trusted computing device may request a web page from ane-commerce site to purchase an item. The page may accept pertinent datafor the purchase transaction such as user identification, shippingaddress, payment information, and other sensitive information. Bydefault, a security system may be configured to re-code the entire webpage with a relatively high level of obfuscation. However, a computingdevice that requests the page that is trusted or otherwise determined tobe at low risk for a security vulnerability may be re-coded according toa security policy that specifies applicable countermeasures for only aportion (rather than the entire) web page code. The web page may also bere-coded for the trusted device with a relatively lower level ofobfuscation that is more efficient to re-code. For an untrustedcomputing device or a device that is otherwise determined to be at highrisk for a security vulnerability, more stringent countermeasures may beapplied in serving resources to the device. For example, additionalcountermeasures, additional portions of code, and/or higher levels ofobfuscation may be applied to resources served to higher risk devicesthan what may otherwise be applied by default.

Particular countermeasures may also be selected based on a securitytoken received with the request for a resource. For example, thevalidation of a security token may indicate by itself that a computingdevice is whitelisted and that no security countermeasures are to beapplied to the requested resource. In some implementations, the securitytoken may include specific information that indicates howcountermeasures are to be applied to the requested resource. Forexample, different types of security tokens may correspond to differentcountermeasures, or the security tokens may include explicit informationthat indicates which countermeasures are applicable to the particularcomputing device that made the request.

At box 314, the process 300 identifies whether there are any applicablesecurity countermeasures to apply to the requested electronic resource.If no countermeasures apply, then the process 300 proceeds to box 316and the electronic resource can be served to the computing devicewithout the resource being re-coded. If countermeasures are determinedto apply, whether by default (box 310) or for a request from a devicehaving a validated security token (box 312), then the process 300 canproceed to box 318, where the electronic resource is re-coded based onthe particular countermeasures that were determined to be applicable. Atbox 320, the re-coded resource is sent to the computing device.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of an example process 400 for processing asecurity token that has been received in conjunction with a request foran electronic resource from a computing device. The process 400 caninclude determining whether a security token is received with a request,and if so, determining whether the token is valid. For example, theprocess 400 may include the operations of at least boxes 306 and 308 ofthe process 300 depicted in FIG. 3. In some implementations, the process400 may operate on security tokens having a configuration like theexample security token 508 in FIG. 5. For example, the security tokenmay comprise a unique Client ID, a timestamp, and a client cookie. TheClient ID may be a globally unique identifier that is assigned toparticular entities or computing devices. For example, a trustedorganization that operates a web search crawling bot may be assigned oneor more Client IDs that are reserved for that organization.

When the organization's search bot crawls a site that is subject toapplication of security countermeasures, the bot can provide a uniqueClient ID for the organization with requests to access resources on thesite so that, for example, one or more of the security countermeasurescan be bypassed. A security system for the site may have accounts forclients identified by the Client ID. For example, a shared secret cookierecipe and a security policy may associated with a Client ID, so thatthe Client ID can be used to look-up the appropriate cookie recipe andsecurity policy. Other information that may be included in a securitytoken, such as a timestamp and client cookie are described further belowwith respect to FIG. 5. Generally, the timestamp indicates a timeassociated with the request for an electronic resource. The clientcookie is generated by a computing device, or by another computingsystem associated with the computing device before the security token isreceived by a security system that applies countermeasures to requestedresources, and uses a shared secret recipe to generate the clientcookie, the recipe being known to the computing device and the securitysystem. The recipe can use information that is ascertainable by thesecurity system from a request (e.g., IP address, HTTP header values),to generate the client cookie. Even though the cookie may be generatedby detectable information from a network request, only a client thatknows the secret recipe can formulate the cookie correctly. Therefore,the client cookie operates as a form of authentication for a requestingcomputing device to a security system.

At box 402, the process 400 identifies an encoded security token that isreceived with a request for an electronic resource. In someimplementations, the encoded security token is identified from the valueof a particular HTTP header field. For example, a new HTTP header field,such as “Secure-User-Agent,” may be used to hold a security token value.The header field and corresponding security token may be generated andinserted into a request by a software module on a computing device or byanother system (e.g., a forward network proxy), before the request istransmitted over the Internet. The security token may be encoded in someimplementations. For example, a plain text security token may beencrypted by the computing device using a 64-bit key with an AdvancedEncryption Standard (AES) technique. The encrypted token can bedecrypted (decoded) by the security system to reveal the plain textsecurity token, including the Client ID, timestamp, and client cookie,for example. In some implementations, the security token may be providedin header fields for other network layers associated with a request. Thesecurity token may also be split among multiple header fields in someimplementations.

At box 404, the encoded security token is decoded. For example, anAES-encrypted security token can be decoded by a security system using asymmetric key. The de-coded, plain text security token can be used forfurther processing in boxes 406-416 of the process 400.

At boxes 406-412, the process 400 determines whether a security tokenreceived with a request is valid by checking one or more features of thesecurity token. In some implementations, the Client ID, timestamp, andclient cookie can each be analyzed to determine the validity of thesecurity token. At box 406, the Client ID is identified from thede-coded security token. The process 400 can determine whether theClient ID is valid. For example, a security system may check whether theClient ID provided in the security token is assigned to a trusted orotherwise known entity. If so, then the timestamp provided in thesecurity token may be checked against a start time, an expiration time,or both, for which security privileges have been granted. For example, ashared secret recipe provided to an entity that is usable to generate atleast a portion of the security token, such as the client cookie, may bevalid for only a limited time. If the shared secret recipe is used togenerate a client cookie outside of a defined time window, then theclient cookie (and thus the security token as a whole) may be invalid.If the timestamp falls within the defined window of time for the recipe,then the client cookie may be further evaluated to determine thevalidity of the security token.

The validity of the client cookie is determined in boxes 410-412. Theclient cookie may be generated using a shared secret cookie recipe thatis known to both the computing device and the security system thatreceives and determines the validity of the security token. The sharedsecret cookie recipe may be generated by the security system andprovided at particular times to trusted clients. Cookie recipes may beupdated periodically or otherwise from time to time so that once aparticular recipe has been in use for some time, that recipe will expireand a new recipe is activated. The shared secret cookie recipe canspecify how the client cookie is to be generated.

In some implementations, the cookie recipe includes instructions forgenerating a client cookie using standard network header values such asinternet protocol (IP), transmission control protocol (TCP), andhypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) headers. The cookie recipe can be inthe form of a mask value on standard IP, TCP, and HTTP headers, forexample. All or a portion of one or more such header values may becombined and encoded as specified by the cookie recipe. For example, aclient cookie may first be formulated by appending a portion of the HTTPUser-Agent field value to the IP address. The TCP source port may thenbe repeated three times and interleaved at particular positions withinthe User-Agent—IP Address string, for example. The specific combinationsof header values, or of other data included with a request for anelectronic resource, can be different for different clients and canchange for a particular client each time that a new cookie recipe isactivated for that client. Even though the cookie recipe is generatedbased on data that is detectable from a request, the manner in which theclient cookie is formed is secret, and therefore only authorized clientswho have the shared secret can generate a valid client cookie. In someimplementations, other data can be incorporated into the formulation ofa client cookie. For example, the cookie recipe may specify that theClient ID or timestamp is to be used in formulating the cookie.

Other public or secret information that is known or accessible to boththe client and the security system can be used to generate the clientcookie. For example, a portion of a public document such as the firstparagraph of a Sherlock Holmes novel may be used alone or in combinationwith other data to form the client cookie. In some implementations, thecookie recipe may specify that the formulation dynamically changes basedon one or more factors that are known or accessible to both the clientand the security system. For example, the formulation may change basedon the timestamp associated with a request for an electronic resource.The cookie recipe may include an algorithm that determines a formulationfor the client cookie based on a time associated with the request forthe electronic resource. For example, the full IP address may be used inthe client cookie at some times, while only a portion of the IP addressmay be used at other times.

Once a raw client cookie has been generated based on particularinformation indicated by the shared secret cookie recipe, the raw clientcookie can be encoded to its final form for inclusion in the securitytoken. In some implementations, the raw client cookie can be compressed,such as by a standard algorithm (e.g., using gzip on the raw clientcookie). The compression may or may not be lossless. In someimplementations, an MD5 hash can be performed on the raw client cookie.The raw client cookie can be encrypted using one or more cryptographictechniques. In some implementations, the encoded client cookie is usedin the plaintext security token, which token is then further encoded inits entirety to generate the encoded (e.g., encrypted) security tokenthat is transmitted in the Secure-User-Agent (or other HTTP header)field. In some implementations, the raw client cookie is not hashed orotherwise encoded before being included in the plaintext security token,and then then security token as a whole (e.g., the Client ID, timestamp,and raw client cookie) are encoded (e.g., encrypted) for transmissionwith the request to the security system.

At box 410, the process 400 retrieves the shared secret cookie recipethat is applicable for the computing device that requested theelectronic resource. For example, the applicable recipe may beidentified by a lookup using the Client ID indicated in the securitytoken. The applicable recipe may match the recipe that was used by thecomputing device to generate the client cookie. If the computing devicecorrectly used the applicable recipe to generate the cookie, then thecookie may be determined to be valid. A valid cookie indicates that thecomputing device is in possession of a valid shared secret cookierecipe, and it follows that the computing device appears to be properlyassociated with the Client ID. Therefore, the client cookie can be usedas part of the security token to authenticate a requesting device withthe security system.

At box 412, the validity of the client cookie is determined. Thevalidity of the client cookie can be determined by comparing the clientcookie extracted from a received security token to informationdetermined by the security system using the applicable shared secretcookie recipe and related information. For example, the security systemcan generate a client cookie according to the applicable cookie recipethat was identified at box 410. Using the cookie recipe and informationspecified by the cookie recipe (e.g., IP address, TCP header values,HTTP header values, etc.), the security system can generate a clientcookie in a like manner to how the requesting computing device generatedthe client cookie. If the client cookie obtained from the requestmatches the client cookie generated by the security system, then theprocess 400 determines that the client cookie obtained from the requestis valid. If the cookies do not match, then the cookie obtained from therequest is determined to be invalid.

In some implementations, other techniques can be employed to determinethe validity of a client cookie as well. For example, a cookie extractedfrom the security token may be de-coded using operations inverse tothose used to encode the cookie at the computing device. The de-codedsecurity token can then be parsed to identify the various components ofdata that were used to generate the security cookie. For example, the IPaddress of the requesting computing device may be reconstructed from thecookie if the cookie recipe called for the IP address to be used ingenerating the cookie. The IP address may then be compared with the IPaddress associated with the request for an electronic resource to verifythat the IP address reconstructed from the cookie matches what isexpected. Other parameters specified by the cookie recipe and used togenerate the client cookie can be reconstructed and verified in asimilar manner.

FIG. 5 shows an example process 500 for generating a security token. Theprocess 500 may be carried out by a computing device for a client entitythat has been granted privileges by a network security operator, forexample. The network security operator may provide the client entitywith one or more shared secret cookie recipes that can be used by theclient entity to generate at least a portion of a security token. Thesecurity token can be provided as part of a request, or otherwise inassociation with a request, from a computing device for an electronicresource. The security token may include a client cookie which has beengenerated using one of the shared secret cookie recipes. One example ofgenerating a security token is depicted by the process 500 in FIG. 5. Insome implementations, the security token may be generated by thecomputing device that makes the request. In some implementations, thesecurity token may be generated by another device that intercepts therequest from the computing device, and inserts a security token into therequest. For example, the requesting computing device may reside behinda proxy server that is configured to insert security tokens intoparticular requests before they are ultimately transmitted to theiraddressed destination.

At stage A (502), particular information 510 is identified for use ingenerating a security token 516. The information may include a Client IDthat indicates an identity of the requesting computing device or anentity associated with the requesting computing device. A timestamp maybe identified that is associated with the request. In someimplementations, the timestamp may indicate a date and time that therequest is submitted or that the security token is generated. Additionalinformation may be identified as well as parameters for the creation ofthe client cookie. The additional information is generally known to oraccessible to both the computing device that makes the request, and asecurity system that receives the request and processes the clientcookie to determine whether it is valid. In some implementations, theadditional information is identified from one or more header values atparticular layers of the request, such as HTTP, IP, and TCP headervalues. For example, the identified information 510 as shown includesthe IP address, HTTP User-Agent, Host, and TCP Source Port of thecomputing device from which the request is made.

At stage B (504), a shared secret cookie recipe is identified. Theshared secret cookie recipe indicates how a valid client cookie is to begenerated, and may also indicate how other portions of the securitytoken are to be generated in some implementations. In the example ofFIG. 5, the cookie recipe 512 includes instructions for generating aclient cookie, and is valid for a specified time in May 2015. If thecookie recipe is used outside of the May 2015 window, the resultingclient cookie will not be valid if the cookie recipe is expired orchanged. The shared secret cookie can identify a manner in which variousparameters from the identified information 510 are pieced together toproduce a raw client cookie. For example, the raw client cookie asspecified by cookie recipe 512 is “Source IP Address+Last 10 Charactersof HTTP User-Agent+TCP Source Port.” The raw client cookie can then beencoded to obfuscate or compress the plain text of the parameters in theraw client cookie. For example, an MD5 hashing algorithm may be appliedto the raw client cookie, or the raw client cookie may be encrypted inany number of ways. In some implementations, the raw client cookie isnot encoded and the raw client cookie is provided in the security tokenwith one or more other pieces of information, which is then encoded(e.g., hashed or otherwise encrypted) as a whole.

At stage C (506), the client cookie 514 is generated using the sharedsecret cookie recipe and relevant parameters. At stage D (508), thesecurity token 516 is generated using the Client ID, timestamp, and theclient cookie. In some implementations, these pieces of information andother information can be combined to generate a security token. Thesecurity token from the combined information may be raw, and may befurther encoded, for example by a hashing or another encryptionalgorithm, which encoded token may then be submitted with the requestfor an electronic resource.

Although the techniques related to security tokens and client cookiesdescribed throughout this paper may provide a reliable means for trustedclients to authenticate themselves with a security system, otherauthentication techniques may be employed in some implementations. Inparticular, different authentication techniques may be used fordifferent clients depending on one or more factors associated with theclients. Clients that make requests over an unsecure network, such asthe Internet that that are more vulnerable to malicious attacks orunwanted snooping may use the robust security token and clientcookie-based techniques described herein. Less secure authentication maybe used when requests are made over networks that are less vulnerable toattacks or unwanted snooping. For example, if a computing device thatrequests a resource is in the same subnet as the security system, thenonly the source IP address may be used as a unique identifier of thecomputing device. In some implementations, the security system mayautomatically select a particular authentication technique based on thesetup of the network over which requests are received from computingdevices.

FIG. 6 shows a system 600 for serving polymorphic and instrumented code.The system 600 may be adapted to perform deflection and detection ofmalicious activity with respect to a web server system. In someimplementations, deflection and detection of malicious activity isachieved by applying security countermeasures to electronic resourcesthat are to be served responsive to requests from computing devices. Thesystem 600 in this example is a system that is operated by or for alarge number of different businesses that serve web pages and othercontent over the internet, such as banks and retailers that have on-linepresences (e.g., on-line stores, or on-line account management tools).The main server systems operated by those organizations or their agentsare designated as web servers 604 a-604 n, and could include a broadarray of web servers, content servers, database servers, financialservers, load balancers, and other necessary components (either asphysical or virtual servers)

A set of security systems 602 a to 602 n are shown connected between theweb servers 604 a to 604 n and a network 610 such as the internet.Although both extend to n in number, the actual number of sub-systemscould vary. For example, certain of the customers could install twoseparate security systems to serve all of their web server systems(which could be one or more), such as for redundancy purposes. Theparticular security systems 602 a-602 n may be matched to particularones of the web server systems 604 a-604 n, or they may be at separatesites, and all of the web servers for various different customers may beprovided with services by a single common set of security servers 602a-602 n (e.g., when all of the server systems are at a singleco-location facility so that bandwidth issues are minimized).

Each of the security systems 602 a-602 n may be arranged and programmedto carry out operations like those discussed above and below and otheroperations, such as to apply countermeasures for deflection anddetection of interaction with electronic resources on client computers.For example, a policy engine 620 in each such security system mayevaluate HTTP requests from client computers (e.g., desktop, laptop,tablet, and smartphone computers) based on header and networkinformation, and can set and store session information related to arelevant policy. The policy engine may be programmed to classifyrequests and correlate them to particular actions to be taken to codereturned by the web server systems before such code is served back to aclient computer. When such code returns, the policy information may beprovided to a decode, analysis, and re-encode module 624, which matchesthe content to be delivered, across multiple content types (e.g., HTML,JavaScript, and CSS), to actions to be taken on the content (e.g., usingXPATH within a DOM), such as substitutions, addition of content, andother actions that may be provided as extensions to the system. Forexample, the different types of content may be analyzed to determinenaming that may extend across such different pieces of content (e.g.,the name of a function or parameter), and such names may be changed in away that differs each time the content is served, e.g., by replacing anamed item with randomly-generated characters. Elements within thedifferent types of content may also first be grouped as having a commoneffect on the operation of the code (e.g., if one element makes a callto another), and then may be re-encoded together in a common manner sothat their interoperation with each other will be consistent even afterthe re-encoding.

Both the analysis of content for determining which transformations toapply to the content, and the transformation of the content itself, mayoccur at the same time (after receiving a request for the content) or atdifferent times. For example, the analysis may be triggered, not by arequest for the content, but by a separate determination that thecontent newly exists or has been changed. Such a determination may bevia a “push” from the web server system reporting that it hasimplemented new or updated content. The determination may also be a“pull” from the security servers 602 a-602 n, such as by the securityservers 602 a-602 n implementing a web crawler (not shown to recursivelysearch for new and changed content and to report such occurrences to thesecurity servers 602 a-602 n, and perhaps return the content itself andperhaps perform some processing on the content (e.g., indexing it orotherwise identifying common terms throughout the content, creating DOMsfor it, etc.). The analysis to identify portions of the content thatshould be subjected to polymorphic modifications each time the contentis served may then be performed according to the manner discussed aboveand below.

A rules engine 622 may store analytical rules for performing suchanalysis and for re-encoding of the content. The rules engine 622 may bepopulated with rules developed through operator observation ofparticular content types, such as by operators of a system studyingtypical web pages that call JavaScript content and recognizing that aparticular method is frequently used in a particular manner. Suchobservation may result in the rules engine 622 being programmed toidentify the method and calls to the method so that they can all begrouped and re-encoded in a consistent and coordinated manner.

The decode, analysis, and re-encode module 624 encodes (i.e., re-codes)content being passed to client computers from a web server according torelevant policies and rules. The module 624 also reverse encodesrequests from the client computers to the relevant web server orservers. For example, a web page may be served with a particularparameter, and may refer to JavaScript that references that sameparameter. The decode, analysis, and re-encode module 624 may replacethe name of that parameter, in each of the different types of content,with a randomly generated name, and each time the web page is served (orat least in varying sessions), the generated name may be different. Whenthe name of the parameter is passed back to the web server, it may bere-encoded back to its original name so that this portion of thesecurity process may occur seamlessly for the web server.

A key for the function that encodes and decodes such strings can bemaintained by the security system 602 along with an identifier for theparticular client computer so that the system 602 may know which key orfunction to apply, and may otherwise maintain a state for the clientcomputer and its session. A stateless approach may also be employed,whereby the system 602 encrypts the state and stores it in a cookie thatis saved at the relevant client computer. The client computer may thenpass that cookie data back when it passes the information that needs tobe decoded back to its original status. With the cookie data, the system602 may use a private key to decrypt the state information and use thatstate information in real-time to decode the information from the clientcomputer. Such a stateless implementation may create benefits such asless management overhead for the server system 602 (e.g., for trackingstate, for storing state, and for performing clean-up of stored stateinformation as sessions time out or otherwise end) and as a result,higher overall throughput.

The decode, analysis, and re-encode module 624 and the security system602 may be configured to modify web code differently each time it isserved in a manner that is generally imperceptible to a user whointeracts with such web code. For example, multiple different clientcomputers may request a common web resource such as a web page or webapplication that a web server provides in response to the multiplerequests in substantially the same manner. Thus, a common web page maybe requested from a web server, and the web server may respond byserving the same or substantially identical HTML, CSS, JavaScript,images, and other web code or files to each of the clients insatisfaction of the requests. In some instances, particular portions ofrequested web resources may be common among multiple requests, whileother portions may be client or session specific. The decode, analysis,and re-encode module 624 may be adapted to apply different modificationsto each instance of a common web resource, or common portion of a webresource, such that the web code that it is ultimately delivered to theclient computers in response to each request for the common web resourceincludes different modifications.

Even where different modifications are applied in responding to multiplerequests for a common web resource, the security system 602 can applythe modifications in a manner that does not substantially affect a waythat the user interacts with the resource, regardless of the differenttransformations applied. For example, when two different clientcomputers request a common web page, the security system 602 appliesdifferent modifications to the web code corresponding to the web page inresponse to each request for the web page, but the modifications do notsubstantially affect a presentation of the web page between the twodifferent client computers. The modifications can therefore be madelargely transparent to users interacting with a common web resource sothat the modifications do not cause a substantial difference in the waythe resource is displayed or the way the user interacts with theresource on different client devices or in different sessions in whichthe resource is requested.

In some implementations, the decode, analysis, and re-encode module 625can be configured to identify one or more strings of text in a documentand to obfuscate those strings of text before the document istransmitted to a client device. A font definition may also be providedto the client device that is arranged to cause the client device todisplay obfuscated text with glyphs that are equivalent to the originalcharacters that were substituted for obfuscated characters. Thus,without de-obfuscating the strings of text, the client device uses aparticular font definition to generate a display of the obfuscated textthat is equivalent to the original text.

An instrumentation module 626 is programmed to add instrumentation codeto the content that is served from a web server. The instrumentationcode is code that is programmed to monitor the operation of other codethat is served. For example, the instrumentation code may be programmedto identify when certain methods are called, when those methods havebeen identified as likely to be called by malicious software. When suchactions are observed to occur by the instrumentation code, theinstrumentation code may be programmed to send a communication to thesecurity server reporting on the type of action that occurred and othermeta data that is helpful in characterizing the activity. Suchinformation can be used to help determine whether the action wasmalicious or benign.

The instrumentation code may also analyze the DOM on a client computerin predetermined manners that are likely to identify the presence of andoperation of malicious software, and to report to the security servers602 or a related system. For example, the instrumentation code may beprogrammed to characterize a portion of the DOM when a user takes aparticular action, such as clicking on a particular on-page button, soas to identify a change in the DOM before and after the click (where theclick is expected to cause a particular change to the DOM if there isbenign code operating with respect to the click, as opposed to maliciouscode operating with respect to the click). Data that characterizes theDOM may also be hashed, either at the client computer or the serversystem 602, to produce a representation of the DOM (e.g., in thedifferences between part of the DOM before and after a defined actionoccurs) that is easy to compare against corresponding representations ofDOMs from other client computers. Other techniques may also be used bythe instrumentation code to generate a compact representation of the DOMor other structure expected to be affected by malicious code in anidentifiable manner.

As noted, the content from web servers 604 a-604 n, as encoded bydecode, analysis, and re-encode module 624, may be rendered on webbrowsers of various client computers. Uninfected client computers 612a-612 n represent computers that do not have malicious code programmedto interfere with a particular site a user visits or to otherwiseperform malicious activity. Infected client computers 614 a-614 nrepresent computers that do have malware or malicious code (618 a-618 n,respectively) programmed to interfere with a particular site a uservisits or to otherwise perform malicious activity. In certainimplementations, the client computers 612, 614 may also store theencrypted cookies discussed above and pass such cookies back through thenetwork 610. The client computers 612, 614 will, once they obtain theserved content, implement DOMs for managing the displayed web pages, andinstrumentation code may monitor the respective DOMs as discussed above.Reports of illogical activity (e.g., software on the client devicecalling a method that does not exist in the downloaded and renderedcontent) can then be reported back to the server system.

The reports from the instrumentation code may be analyzed and processedin various manners in order to determine how to respond to particularabnormal events, and to track down malicious code via analysis ofmultiple different similar interactions across different clientcomputers 612, 614. For small-scale analysis, each web site operator maybe provided with a single security console 607 that provides analyticaltools for a single site or group of sites. For example, the console 607may include software for showing groups of abnormal activities, orreports that indicate the type of code served by the web site thatgenerates the most abnormal activity. For example, a security officerfor a bank may determine that defensive actions are needed if most ofthe reported abnormal activity for its web site relates to contentelements corresponding to money transfer operations—an indication thatstale malicious code may be trying to access such elementssurreptitiously.

The security servers 602 a-n may also include an authentication module628. The authentication module 628 can identify whether the clientcomputers 612, 614 are registered with the security servers 602 a-n. Theauthentication module may analyze one or more parameters from a requestfrom the client computers 612, 614 to determine whether the request isassociated with a registered entity. Some entities may be registered,for example, because they have been determined to be trustworthy and topose little risk of a malware or other security threat. Those entitiesmay be included in a whitelist that indicates that all or some of thesecurity countermeasures (e.g., encoding, decoding, re-encoding, andinstrumentation techniques) that the security servers 602 a-n wouldnormally (e.g., by default) apply to resources served to the clientcomputers 612, 614 can be bypassed. The authentication module 628 mayevaluate a security token 628 that the client computers 612, 614 providewith a resource request in order to authenticate the client computers612, 614 as being associated with an entity registered with the securityservers 602 a-n. A client computer 612, 614 can be authenticated in someimplementations if the security token is determined to have beenproperly generated using a valid shared secret key known to theauthentication module 628. If a request from a client computer has beenauthenticated, then none, one, or more particular securitycountermeasures may be determined to apply to the resource that isserved in response to the request.

Console 607 may also be multiple different consoles used by differentemployees of an operator of the system 600, and may be used forpre-analysis of web content before it is served, as part of determininghow best to apply polymorphic transformations to the web code. Forexample, in combined manual and automatic analysis like that describedabove, an operator at console 607 may form or apply rules 622 that guidethe transformation that is to be performed on the content when it isultimately served. The rules may be written explicitly by the operatoror may be provided by automatic analysis and approved by the operator.Alternatively, or in addition, the operator may perform actions in agraphical user interface (e.g., by selecting particular elements fromthe code by highlighting them with a pointer, and then selecting anoperation from a menu of operations) and rules may be written consistentwith those actions.

A central security console 608 may connect to a large number of webcontent providers, and may be run, for example, by an organization thatprovides the software for operating the security systems 602 a-602 n.Such console 608 may access complex analytical and data analysis tools,such as tools that identify clustering of abnormal activities acrossthousands of client computers and sessions, so that an operator of theconsole 608 can focus on those clusters in order to diagnose them asmalicious or benign, and then take steps to thwart any maliciousactivity.

In certain other implementations, the console 608 may have access tosoftware for analyzing telemetry data received from a very large numberof client computers that execute instrumentation code provided by thesystem 600. Such data may result from forms being re-written across alarge number of web pages and web sites to include content that collectssystem information such as browser version, installed plug-ins, screenresolution, window size and position, operating system, networkinformation, and the like. In addition, user interaction with servedcontent may be characterized by such code, such as the speed with whicha user interacts with a page, the path of a pointer over the page, andthe like.

Such collected telemetry data, across many thousands of sessions andclient devices, may be used by the console 608 to identify what is“natural” interaction with a particular page that is likely the resultof legitimate human actions, and what is “unnatural” interaction that islikely the result of a bot interacting with the content. Statistical andmachine learning methods may be used to identify patterns in suchtelemetry data, and to resolve bot candidates to particular clientcomputers. Such client computers may then be handled in special mannersby the system 600, may be blocked from interaction, or may have theiroperators notified that their computer is potentially running malicioussoftware (e.g., by sending an e-mail to an account holder of a computerso that the malicious software cannot intercept it easily).

FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of a computer system 700. The system 700can be used for the operations described in association with any of thecomputer-implemented methods described previously, according to oneimplementation. The system 700 is intended to include various forms ofdigital computers, such as laptops, desktops, workstations, personaldigital assistants, servers, blade servers, mainframes, and otherappropriate computers. The system 700 can also include mobile devices,such as personal digital assistants, cellular telephones, smartphones,and other similar computing devices. Additionally the system can includeportable storage media, such as, Universal Serial Bus (USB) flashdrives. For example, the USB flash drives may store operating systemsand other applications. The USB flash drives can include input/outputcomponents, such as a wireless transmitter or USB connector that may beinserted into a USB port of another computing device.

The system 700 includes a processor 710, a memory 720, a storage device730, and an input/output device 740. Each of the components 710, 720,730, and 740 are interconnected using a system bus 750. The processor710 is capable of processing instructions for execution within thesystem 700. The processor may be designed using any of a number ofarchitectures. For example, the processor 710 may be a CISC (ComplexInstruction Set Computers) processor, a RISC (Reduced Instruction SetComputer) processor, or a MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computer)processor.

In one implementation, the processor 710 is a single-threaded processor.In another implementation, the processor 710 is a multi-threadedprocessor. The processor 710 is capable of processing instructionsstored in the memory 720 or on the storage device 730 to displaygraphical information for a user interface on the input/output device740.

The memory 720 stores information within the system 700. In oneimplementation, the memory 720 is a computer-readable medium. In oneimplementation, the memory 720 is a volatile memory unit. In anotherimplementation, the memory 720 is a non-volatile memory unit.

The storage device 730 is capable of providing mass storage for thesystem 400. In one implementation, the storage device 730 is acomputer-readable medium. In various different implementations, thestorage device 730 may be a floppy disk device, a hard disk device, anoptical disk device, or a tape device.

The input/output device 740 provides input/output operations for thesystem 400. In one implementation, the input/output device 740 includesa keyboard and/or pointing device. In another implementation, theinput/output device 740 includes a display unit for displaying graphicaluser interfaces.

The features described can be implemented in digital electroniccircuitry, or in computer hardware, firmware, software, or incombinations of them. The apparatus can be implemented in a computerprogram product tangibly embodied in an information carrier, e.g., in amachine-readable storage device for execution by a programmableprocessor; and method steps can be performed by a programmable processorexecuting a program of instructions to perform functions of thedescribed implementations by operating on input data and generatingoutput. The described features can be implemented advantageously in oneor more computer programs that are executable on a programmable systemincluding at least one programmable processor coupled to receive dataand instructions from, and to transmit data and instructions to, a datastorage system, at least one input device, and at least one outputdevice. A computer program is a set of instructions that can be used,directly or indirectly, in a computer to perform a certain activity orbring about a certain result. A computer program can be written in anyform of programming language, including compiled or interpretedlanguages, and it can be deployed in any form, including as astand-alone program or as a module, component, subroutine, or other unitsuitable for use in a computing environment.

Suitable processors for the execution of a program of instructionsinclude, by way of example, both general and special purposemicroprocessors, and the sole processor or one of multiple processors ofany kind of computer. Generally, a processor will receive instructionsand data from a read-only memory or a random access memory or both. Theessential elements of a computer are a processor for executinginstructions and one or more memories for storing instructions and data.Generally, a computer will also include, or be operatively coupled tocommunicate with, one or more mass storage devices for storing datafiles; such devices include magnetic disks, such as internal hard disksand removable disks; magneto-optical disks; and optical disks. Storagedevices suitable for tangibly embodying computer program instructionsand data include all forms of non-volatile memory, including by way ofexample semiconductor memory devices, such as EPROM, EEPROM, and flashmemory devices; magnetic disks such as internal hard disks and removabledisks; magneto-optical disks; and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks. Theprocessor and the memory can be supplemented by, or incorporated in,ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits).

To provide for interaction with a user, the features can be implementedon a computer having a display device such as a CRT (cathode ray tube)or LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor for displaying information tothe user and a keyboard and a pointing device such as a mouse or atrackball by which the user can provide input to the computer.Additionally, such activities can be implemented via touchscreenflat-panel displays and other appropriate mechanisms.

The features can be implemented in a computer system that includes aback-end component, such as a data server, or that includes a middlewarecomponent, such as an application server or an Internet server, or thatincludes a front-end component, such as a client computer having agraphical user interface or an Internet browser, or any combination ofthem. The components of the system can be connected by any form ormedium of digital data communication such as a communication network.Examples of communication networks include a local area network (“LAN”),a wide area network (“WAN”), peer-to-peer networks (having ad-hoc orstatic members), grid computing infrastructures, and the Internet.

The computer system can include clients and servers. A client and serverare generally remote from each other and typically interact through anetwork, such as the described one. The relationship of client andserver arises by virtue of computer programs running on the respectivecomputers and having a client-server relationship to each other.

While this specification contains many specific implementation details,these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of anyinventions or of what may be claimed, but rather as descriptions offeatures specific to particular implementations of particularinventions. Certain features that are described in this specification inthe context of separate implementations can also be implemented incombination in a single implementation. Conversely, various featuresthat are described in the context of a single implementation can also beimplemented in multiple implementations separately or in any suitablesubcombination. Moreover, although features may be described above asacting in certain combinations and even initially claimed as such, oneor more features from a claimed combination can in some cases be excisedfrom the combination, and the claimed combination may be directed to asubcombination or variation of a subcombination.

Similarly, while operations are depicted in the drawings in a particularorder, this should not be understood as requiring that such operationsbe performed in the particular order shown or in sequential order, orthat all illustrated operations be performed, to achieve desirableresults. In certain circumstances, multitasking and parallel processingmay be advantageous. Moreover, the separation of various systemcomponents in the implementations described above should not beunderstood as requiring such separation in all implementations, and itshould be understood that the described program components and systemscan generally be integrated together in a single software product orpackaged into multiple software products.

Thus, particular implementations of the subject matter have beendescribed. Other implementations are within the scope of the followingclaims. In some cases, the actions recited in the claims can beperformed in a different order and still achieve desirable results. Inaddition, the processes depicted in the accompanying figures do notnecessarily require the particular order shown, or sequential order, toachieve desirable results. In certain implementations, multitasking andparallel processing may be advantageous.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:receiving, at a computing system, a first request for an electronicresource to be served to a first computing device remote from thecomputing system; identifying a default set of security countermeasuresto apply to the electronic resource before the electronic resource isserved to the first computing device, wherein the securitycountermeasures in the default set of security countermeasures areoperable to interfere with an ability of malware to interact with theelectronic resource when the electronic resource is executed at thefirst computing device; applying the default set of securitycountermeasures to the electronic resource by re-coding an initialinstance of the electronic resource to generate a re-coded instance ofthe electronic resource; serving the re-coded instance of the electronicresource to the first computing device; receiving, at the computingsystem, a second request for the electronic resource to be served to asecond computing device remote from the computing system; identifying,at the computing system and based on information associated with thesecond request, that a submitter of the second request is a trustedentity that has been pre-authorized to be served content that bypassesthe default set of security countermeasures; and in response toidentifying that the submitter of the second request is a trustedentity, serving the initial instance of the electronic resource to thesecond computing device without applying the default set of securitycountermeasures.
 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, furthercomprising determining, by the computing system, whether a submitter ofthe first request is a trusted entity that has been pre-authorized to beserved content that bypasses the default set of securitycountermeasures, wherein the default set of security countermeasures areapplied to the electronic resource as a result of a determination thatthe submitter of the first request is not a trusted entity.
 3. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving,at the computing system and from a plurality of third computing devicesremote from the computing system, a plurality of third requests for theelectronic resource to be served to the plurality of third computingdevices; determining that the default set of security countermeasures isto be applied to the electronic resource before the electronic resourceis served to the plurality of third computing devices; applying thedefault set of security countermeasures to respective initial instancesof the electronic resource that are to be served to the plurality ofthird computing devices by re-coding the respective initial instances ofthe electronic resource to generate respective re-coded instances of theelectronic resource, wherein at least some of the respective initialinstances of the electronic resource are re-coded in different mannersconsistent with the default set of security countermeasures, such thatthe respective re-coded instances of the electronic resource that are tobe served to at least some of the third computing devices in theplurality of third computing devices are different from each other; andserving the re-coded instances of the electronic resource to theplurality of third computing devices.
 4. The computer-implemented methodof claim 1, wherein: the electronic resource comprises a hypertextmarkup language (HTML) document for a web page, and re-coding theinitial instance of the electronic resource to generate the re-codedinstance of the electronic resource comprises modifying names orattribute values of at least one of a hyperlink, a form, an input field,and a function contained in code for the HTML document.
 5. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving,at the computing system, a third request for the electronic resource tobe served to a third computing device remote from the computing system;and selecting, based on information included in the third request, oneor more particular security countermeasures to apply to the electronicresource before the electronic resource is served to the third computingdevice, the one or more particular security countermeasures selectedfrom among a plurality of available security countermeasures that thecomputing system is capable of applying to the electronic resource. 6.The computer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein the one or moreparticular security countermeasures selected to apply to the electronicresource that is to be served to the third computing device is differentthan the default set of security countermeasures.
 7. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein the one or moreparticular security countermeasures are selected based on an identity ofa submitter of the third request as indicated in the informationincluded in the third request.
 8. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein the information associated with the second request,from which the computing system identifies that the submitter of thesecond request is a trusted entity, comprises a token that is includedin the second request.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8,further comprising using a value of the token to identify a securitypolicy associated with the submitter of the second request, the securitypolicy specifying a submitter-specific combination of none, one, ormultiple security countermeasures that are to be applied to contentserved to the submitter of the second request.
 10. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the token is received ashaving been generated by the second computing device based on a sharedsecret token recipe that had been provided to an agent of the submitterof the second request from the computing system before the secondrequest was made.
 11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10,further comprising decoding the token included in the second request atthe computing system using the shared secret token recipe and one ormore other values included in the second request selected from a groupcomprising an internet protocol (IP) address value, transmission controlprotocol (TCP) message value, and a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)request header value.
 12. One or more non-transitory computer-readablemedia having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one ormore processors, cause performance of operations comprising: receiving,at a computing system, a first request for an electronic resource to beserved to a first computing device remote from the computing system;identifying a default set of security countermeasures to apply to theelectronic resource before the electronic resource is served to thefirst computing device, wherein the security countermeasures in thedefault set of security countermeasures are operable to interfere withan ability of malware to interact with the electronic resource when theelectronic resource is executed at the first computing device; applyingthe default set of security countermeasures to the electronic resourceby re-coding an initial instance of the electronic resource to generatea re-coded instance of the electronic resource; serving the re-codedinstance of the electronic resource to the first computing device;receiving, at the computing system, a second request for the electronicresource to be served to a second computing device remote from thecomputing system; identifying, at the computing system and based oninformation associated with the second request, that a submitter of thesecond request is a trusted entity that has been pre-authorized to beserved content that bypasses the default set of securitycountermeasures; and in response to identifying that the submitter ofthe second request is a trusted entity, serving the initial instance ofthe electronic resource to the second computing device without applyingthe default set of security countermeasures.
 13. The one or morenon-transitory computer-readable media of claim 12, wherein theoperations further comprise determining, by the computing system,whether a submitter of the first request is a trusted entity that hasbeen pre-authorized to be served content that bypasses the default setof security countermeasures, wherein the default set of securitycountermeasures are applied to the electronic resource as a result of adetermination that the submitter of the first request is not a trustedentity.
 14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media ofclaim 12, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving, at thecomputing system and from a plurality of third computing devices remotefrom the computing system, a plurality of third requests for theelectronic resource to be served to the plurality of third computingdevices; determining that the default set of security countermeasures isto be applied to the electronic resource before the electronic resourceis served to the plurality of third computing devices; applying thedefault set of security countermeasures to respective initial instancesof the electronic resource that are to be served to the plurality ofthird computing devices by re-coding the respective initial instances ofthe electronic resource to generate respective re-coded instances of theelectronic resource, wherein at least some of the respective initialinstances of the electronic resource are re-coded in different mannersconsistent with the default set of security countermeasures, such thatthe respective re-coded instances of the electronic resource that are tobe served to at least some of the third computing devices in theplurality of third computing devices are different from each other; andserving the re-coded instances of the electronic resource to theplurality of third computing devices.
 15. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable media of claim 12, wherein: the electronic resourcecomprises a hypertext markup language (HTML) document for a web page,and re-coding the initial instance of the electronic resource togenerate the re-coded instance of the electronic resource comprisesmodifying names or attribute values of at least one of a hyperlink, aform, an input field, and a function contained in code for the HTMLdocument.
 16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media ofclaim 12, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving, at thecomputing system, a third request for the electronic resource to beserved to a third computing device remote from the computing system; andselecting, based on information included in the third request, one ormore particular security countermeasures to apply to the electronicresource before the electronic resource is served to the third computingdevice, the one or more particular security countermeasures selectedfrom among a plurality of available security countermeasures that thecomputing system is capable of applying to the electronic resource. 17.The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 16,wherein the one or more particular security countermeasures selected toapply to the electronic resource that is to be served to the thirdcomputing device are different than the default set of securitycountermeasures.
 18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readablemedia of claim 16, wherein the one or more particular securitycountermeasures are selected based on an identity of a submitter of thethird request as indicated in the information included in the thirdrequest.
 19. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media ofclaim 12, wherein the information associated with the second request,from which the computing system identifies that the submitter of thesecond request is a trusted entity, comprises a token that is includedin the second request.
 20. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable media of claim 19, wherein the operations furthercomprise using a value of the token to identify a security policyassociated with the submitter of the second request, the security policyspecifying a submitter-specific combination of none, one, or multiplesecurity countermeasures that are to be applied to content served to thesubmitter of the second request.
 21. The one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable media of claim 19, wherein the token is received ashaving been generated by the second computing device based on a sharedsecret token recipe that had been provided to an agent of the submitterof the second request from the computing system before the secondrequest was made.
 22. A computing system comprising: one or moreprocessors; and non-transitory computer-readable media havinginstructions stored thereon that, when executed by the one or moreprocessors, cause performance of operations comprising: receiving, atthe computing system, a first request for an electronic resource to beserved to a first computing device remote from the computing system;identifying a default set of security countermeasures to apply to theelectronic resource before the electronic resource is served to thefirst computing device, wherein the security countermeasures in thedefault set of security countermeasures are operable to interfere withan ability of malware to interact with the electronic resource when theelectronic resource is executed at the first computing device; applyingthe default set of security countermeasures to the electronic resourceby re-coding an initial instance of the electronic resource to generatea re-coded instance of the electronic resource; serving the re-codedinstance of the electronic resource to the first computing device;receiving, at the computing system, a second request for the electronicresource to be served to a second computing device remote from thecomputing system; identifying, at the computing system and based oninformation associated with the second request, that a submitter of thesecond request is a trusted entity that has been pre-authorized to beserved content that bypasses the default set of securitycountermeasures; and in response to identifying that the submitter ofthe second request is a trusted entity, serving the initial instance ofthe electronic resource to the second computing device without applyingthe default set of security countermeasures.
 23. The computing system ofclaim 22, wherein the operations further comprise determining, by thecomputing system, whether a submitter of the first request is a trustedentity that has been pre-authorized to be served content that bypassesthe default set of security countermeasures, wherein the default set ofsecurity countermeasures are applied to the electronic resource as aresult of a determination that the submitter of the first request is nota trusted entity.
 24. The computing system of claim 22, wherein theoperations further comprise: receiving, at the computing system and froma plurality of third computing devices remote from the computing system,a plurality of third requests for the electronic resource to be servedto the plurality of third computing devices; determining that thedefault set of security countermeasures is to be applied to theelectronic resource before the electronic resource is served to theplurality of third computing devices; applying the default set ofsecurity countermeasures to respective initial instances of theelectronic resource that are to be served to the plurality of thirdcomputing devices by re-coding the respective initial instances of theelectronic resource to generate respective re-coded instances of theelectronic resource, wherein at least some of the respective initialinstances of the electronic resource are re-coded in different mannersconsistent with the default set of security countermeasures, such thatthe respective re-coded instances of the electronic resource that are tobe served to at least some of the third computing devices in theplurality of third computing devices are different from each other; andserving the re-coded instances of the electronic resource to theplurality of third computing devices.
 25. The computing system of claim22, wherein: the electronic resource comprises a hypertext markuplanguage (HTML) document for a web page, and re-coding the initialinstance of the electronic resource to generate the re-coded instance ofthe electronic resource comprises modifying names or attribute values ofat least one of a hyperlink, a form, an input field, and a functioncontained in code for the HTML document.
 26. The computing system ofclaim 22, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving, at thecomputing system, a third request for the electronic resource to beserved to a third computing device remote from the computing system; andselecting, based on information included in the third request, one ormore particular security countermeasures to apply to the electronicresource before the electronic resource is served to the third computingdevice, the one or more particular security countermeasures selectedfrom among a plurality of available security countermeasures that thecomputing system is capable of applying to the electronic resource. 27.The computing system of claim 26, wherein the one or more particularsecurity countermeasures selected to apply to the electronic resourcethat is to be served to the third computing device is different than thedefault set of security countermeasures.
 28. The computing system ofclaim 26, wherein the one or more particular security countermeasuresare selected based on an identity of a submitter of the third request asindicated in the information included in the third request.
 29. Thecomputing system of claim 22, wherein the information associated withthe second request, from which the computing system identifies that thesubmitter of the second request is a trusted entity, comprises a tokenthat is included in the second request.
 30. The computing system ofclaim 29, wherein the operations further comprise using a value of thetoken to identify a security policy associated with the submitter of thesecond request, the security policy specifying a submitter-specificcombination of none, one, or multiple security countermeasures that areto be applied to content served to the submitter of the second request.31. The computing system of 29, wherein the token is received as havingbeen generated by the second computing device based on a shared secrettoken recipe that had been provided to an agent of the submitter of thesecond request from the computing system before the second request wasmade.
 32. The computing system of claim 31, wherein the operationsfurther comprise decoding the token included in the second request atthe computing system using the shared secret token recipe and one ormore other values included in the second request selected from a groupcomprising an internet protocol (IP) address value, transmission controlprotocol (TCP) message value, and a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)request header value.